For Everything There Is a Season
by natural-blue-26
Summary: "Some forgotten, childish version of her was certain that if she glanced up from brushing her teeth now more horrific things than long dead specters would leap out at her."
1. Chapter 1

18. Birth

The first time Naomi saw her eldest daughter she was bloody, hands clinched at the ends of arms shaking with newborn infant rage (and more than vocal about her displeasure) in Daniel's arms.

By the time she and her baby had both been checked by the medical staff, cleaned up and her daughter wrapped into a small, delicate pink bundle and placed into her arms Naomi was aching to hold the tiny girl- all barely seven pounds of unexpected responsibility that would without a doubt affect Naomi's competition of law school and push back taking the bar exam until God knew when.

Naomi softly traced her fingertips down her daughter's cheek- how could any human thing be so impossibly soft? Quieter now that all the initial trauma of coming into the world was behind her, the baby stared back at her mother with a sleepy, blurry-eyed curiosity from under her mass of feathery dark hair.

Daniel and the medical staff were conversing in the background and the excitement in her young husband's voiced carried through into her thoughts, if not the actual words. A camera flashed a few times, no doubt also wielded by Dan, but Naomi couldn't bring herself to refocus on the rest of the room. Eight months of panicking, planning and waiting, twenty-two hours of pain, sweat, swearing and tears- all cumulating in this tiny, perfect person in her arms with doll-sized hands and fingernails that seemed impossibly small.

Naomi smiled tiredly and pressed a kiss to her daughter's forehead, "Hello beautiful."

Daniel perched on the edge of the hospital bead and leaned over her shoulder to wrap a strong arm around his family, "Did you decide on just one name yet, sweetheart?"

Naomi glanced briefly up at him before lightly grasping her husband's hand with her free one not occupied with holding their daughter.

"Her name is Rachel."


	2. Prompt 4, 'All Right'

**Prompt 4, 'All Right'**

"_Sometimes it's hard to get out of a roll once you've started playing the part."_

–**Rachel, **_**The Underground**_

**o**O**O**O**o**

Everyone- her parents, grandparents, Cassie, friends, strangers, counselors her mother drags her to see- always wants to know how she's doing _how she's coping with having a dead sister_, but she senses insincerity in most of their professed concern and it irrationally irritates her.

Jordan **knows** that her history teacher was talking to her science teacher about _her_ before she came into class yesterday, the guilty start and sudden cessation of conversation was too obvious- did they think she was a kid like Sara and didn't know what was going on?

She heard Ashleigh Johnson tell Britney O'Connor that _Jordan was crying in the cafeteria bathroom yesterday, honest, you know, the one with the dead sister_- **as if **she would let someone catch her bawling between periods. The injustice of the gossip after she's tried so hard to keep her grief to herself chokes her; she slams her gym locker and storms away.

"I'm fine," she tells her mother with a shrug. It isn't the first time her mother has caught her sitting in the dusky twilight of her room, unopened album of family pictures in her lap and wearing an old sweatshirt of Rachel's that miraculously had survived the fallout. Jordan hadn't felt like getting up to turn on the lamp is all. Again.

"We're holding up okay," she reassures Cassie when her sister's _living_ friend shows up at the front door _again_ bearing lasagna and garlic bread. Rachel had adored garlic bread; Jordan didn't feel like she could ever stomach eating it again. Cassie looks like she doesn't quite believe this _fake_ brave statement, but she doesn't push Jordan further before she walks past her into the cluttered kitchen beyond.

But as Jordan flips through the latest roll of snapshots of her family they've just picked up from the drugstore- of Sara's tenth birthday (without Rachel), Jordan's latest soccer victory (without Rachel cheering her on from the sidelines), and the "surprise" annual Mother's Day breakfast she and Sara had slaved over (without Rachel) trying to make it as pretty as it had been in the past- Jordan questions how they can possibly move forward with the Rachel-shaped hole tainting all their current memories.

How can her family ever be "all right" permanently missing a member?


	3. Prompt 44, 'Cold'

**Prompt 44, 'Cold'**

"_Perhaps they are not the stars, but rather openings in Heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy." _

**~Author Unknown**

**o**O**O**O**o**

"Mom?"

Naomi glanced up from the brief she was preparing to find her youngest daughter hovering uncertainly in the doorway of her home office, hair mussed from sleep and favorite stuffed bunny tucked firmly under her arm. A quick glance at the clock confirmed that it was, indeed, after midnight and Sara had been put to bed hours ago. So why-

"Mom, do you think Rachel gets cold?"

Startled by the question and needing a moment to form a reply to the apparent randomness of the inquiry, Naomi laid her pen carefully down on the desk, pushed back her chair, and opened her arms in invitation. Sara needed no second offer before speeding across the room and settling herself in her mother's lap, almost too old to comfortably do so.

"Now honey," Naomi asked quietly, taking a calming inhale of the comfortably familiar smells of bubblegum toothpaste and strawberry-scented shampoo, "why would you ask a thing like that? We've talked about how Rachel's in heaven, and how nice it is for her there."

Sara toyed with Naomi's pendant necklace _the __last birthday gift__ Rachel had ever purchased for her mother_ before replying.

"Well, we were talking about outer space in school today, and Mr. Bennett says space is really cold and everything up there can get frozen. And since heaven's up in space, does that mean heaven is cold? I don't want Rachel to be cold while she's waiting for us Mom- Rachel doesn't like getting cold."

_Oh dear God, how on earth was she going to... She wasn't a priest or a rabbi. How do you answer this kind of question from a child?_


	4. Prompt 8, 'Breakdown'

**Prompt 8, 'Breakdown'**

_A/N: Set directly before 'Joy'._

**o**O**O**O**o**

"_Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." _

**-From a headstone in Ireland**

**o**O**O**O**o**

Naomi initially rages when word trickles back to those left behind in the valley that everything is over- but that her oldest child is reported among the dead. Rachel simply couldn't- maybe they simply hadn't found her yet, but Rachel is strong and evidently good at what she's secretly been involved in for the last several years - - - and her baby simply couldn't be _dead_.

Her heart wounded and bleeding, Naomi lashes out at the other parents in the valley - _with their __**living**__ children_ - when they try and comfort her. Unforgivable, hurtful things shoot from her mouth at them for talking like it's even remotely possibly that Rachel is _gone_. She pushes Eva away from her_ this woman who has only lost a few years of her son's life, but not her son_, and barely stills her hand as it rises to strike the other woman's face.

Naomi turns away from her to find someone _anyone_ to hold responsible for this - - - and instead finds her two youngest daughters hovering on the edge of the assortment of remaining humans and Hork Bajr. Once Jordan realizes she has her mother's attention, she snags Sara's hand in her's and weaves through the group until they reach Naomi's side.

The blood that has been rushing hot and bitter in Naomi's veins freezes. _How on earth can she tell them that Rachel- - -_

Deprived of the anger that has been keeping the tidal wave of sadness at bay, the first of many hot tears leak down Naomi's face as her remaining children _because Rachel is dead, gone, stolen from them forever_ reach her. She crushes them to her and keens.


	5. Prompt 22, 'Joy'

**Prompt 22, Joy**

"_Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."_ **-Elizabeth Stone**

**o**O**O**O**o**

She crushes her remaining daughters in her arms, and Naomi clings to them as her knees give out under devastating the weight of her acceptance; they sink en mass to the rough ground of the valley floor.

The camp bustles with excitement around them - the war is **over **to everyone else and the infectious excitement around them makes Naomi's gut clench hard and then flare in protest as she see watches everyone around them act as if nothing is wrong _when everything is_ - - -

Sara sniffs despondently on her left side, old enough to recognize her mother is hurting but young enough to not understand why. Naomi presses a shaky kiss to her youngest daughter's brow, trying to find the words to explain - - - _she who has always been so at ease with words in front of a courtroom, and she can't find any of them now to explain to an eight year old about_ - - -

A loud chorus of cheers in a garbled combination of English and their native language rings skyward from a huddle of Hork Bajr behind her family - - - and Naomi has never in her life hated someone for their happiness like she does in this moment.


	6. Prompt 22, 'Soil'

**Prompt 22, 'Soil'**

_A/N: Because this prompt was just *begging* me to take '__Beauty Is Never Tarnished__' from TVTropes and run for the hills with emotional subverting._

**o**O**O**O**o**

_"Out, damned spot! out, I say!__" _

**-Lady Macbeth, **_Macbeth_: Act 5, Scene 1

**o**O**O**O**o**

"Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors."  
-**Eugene O'Neill**

**o**O**O**O**o**

She strips out of her morphing outfit with slow, ritualistic precision in the pale blue dawning of another cloudless morning.

First the top, then the bottom halves peel away from her cool skin, the process reflecting back to her _not quite true to life_ in the full-length mirror. Once she finishes, the limp spandex lies empty and crumpled on her bedroom floor.

After nights like this- with the roar of battle still raging in her ears and the phantom feel of soft flesh splitting under the unforgiving sharpness of her fingers _claws_ – she always feels that there should be some physical sign on her _somewhere_ that everyone can see marking _staining_ her body as well as her mind. A mark to be some kind to be a warning for others- a scarlet letter K for killer, M for murderer, E for executioner, D for both dangerous and deceitful. _Scrawled in Hork Bajr blood, perhaps._

The fabled beautiful, untarnished Rachel– who is supposed to be able to walk through anything the elements _Ellimist _can throw at her without a splatter of mud adhering to her or a golden hair out of place – why is she the only one who can't see this girl at all?


	7. Prompt 2, 'Let Go'

**Prompt 2, 'Let Go'**

**o**O**O**O**o**

"_It's the game of life. Do I win or do I lose? One day they're gonna shut the game down. I gotta have as much fun and go around the board as many times as I can before it's my turn to leave."_  
**Tupac Shakur **

**o**O**O**O**o**

Sometimes, the constant restlessness in her blood and the invisible smothering feeling of too many secrets kept in one place drove Rachel out of her house late at night; she gradually took to winging out of her bedroom window to crash with the boys in Ax's scoop when the dark blanket of self-reflection grew too heavy.

The amount of truly random _**crap**_ Marco had coerced Ax into helping him sneak, drag and build in the small space was as astonishing as it was thankfully distracting sometimes- and all of it was so disconnected from the war outside the enclosure.

"You have Pokémon cards in here? Seriously? You want Ax going back to his home world and sharing _this_ about humanity?"

Teaching Ax how to play human games (card games, board games, a truly regretful experience trying to get Ax in human morph through a Twister game without maiming anyone) was routinely attempted on nights like this- mainly because most games they had accumulated didn't involve anything to do with war. (The Risk game mysteriously disappeared from the scoop after Rachel thrashed Marco and crowed about his caution trouncing his strategy for a week.)

Ax, as it happened, was appalled by Clue, so they only played it once- to Marco's regret.

"Ok, final guess- Rachel in grizzly morph in the study., Tobias would be out on the lawn eating the guy's furry woodland creatures, Ax wouldn't know how to wield a candlestick if he had to, and I'm too busy _consoling_ Miss Scarlet in the lounge."

Mostly, they watched movies.

Marco's collection left something to be desired for everyone else- Tobias because his humor tended to be incompatible with Marco's, Rachel because she had a very low appreciation for "stupid fake macho guy humor," and Ax because he simply didn't _get it_ and tended to ask questions throughout the entire movie. Marco, however, insisted he only owned "the classics" and that the rest of them were lacking in taste and his esteemed level of cinema sophistication.

"What do you mean you've never seen Top Gun? You're a _guy_ who spends his life as a _bird_ with _wings_ and you've never seen Top Gun? That's just un-American."

Tobias- human and comfortingly stereotypically boyfriend-like for a short time- would shyly put his arm lightly around her shoulder while they sat side by side on the ground in front of the television. Rachel would relax in the pseudo "normal" for as long as she could before his two hours were nearly up or- more often- Marco's cutting words about _certain people _sitting in trees embarrassed Tobias too badly (and she would have to leap up and chase Marco through the surrounding woods).

Some days she felt all she had left of an ordinary life were these scattered pieces, jumbled together where the rest of her used to be.

**o**O**O**O**o**

"_Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise."_  
**- George Orwell **

**o**O**O**O**o**

_A/N: My humble attempt at bringing Rachel into "Team Snark Squad" for some chill time. If you would like to see the guys truly well done, go to my favorites and check out HotPinkCoffee's _collection**Like Setting Up Punchlines**. First time trying to write Marco- hopefully it doesn't fail to badly. :P


	8. Prompt 27, Carnation

_****_'**Picking Wildflowers'**

**o**O**O**O**o**

_**Prompt 27, Carnation**_

**o**O**O**O**o**

If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom,

maybe your soul has never been in bloom.

**-Terri ****Guillemets**

**o**O**O**O**o**

Tobias never once brought Rachel roses.

They never officially went to a single school dance "together"; instead the six of them gravitated into always going as a group, so there were never any before home coming staged photographs in front of fireplaces with parents hovering around, no half-awkward, half-romantic dinners, and there were no roses artfully arranged into corsages or boutonniere in suspiciously coordinating colors to be carefully saved afterward.

Sometimes, however, wildflowers showed up laying on Rachel's dresser or cushioned on her pillow when she dragged herself home from another exhausting gymnastics practice she no longer had time for, but wasn't willing to give up just yet. Tobias was never hanging around to claim credit and reap rewards in typical teenage boy fashion when she got to her room- the wind would beckon her out the still open window and into the sky after him in his stead.

And one not so random day in mid-February Rachel found a slightly battered carnation sticking shyly out of her locker. There was no written note, just a quick sketch of an aerial view of the edge of town she was quite familiar with from weekly trips through the skies.

Rachel found herself smiling at everyone she met for the rest of the day; the flower was pressed and kept inside a favorite book to be miraculously found by her sister in the carnage where their house once stood after the war.

Jordan kept it because the dried out, withered bloom had obviously meant _something _to her dead sister, even though she didn't know what or why; glancing upward to the sky that the burnt out roof no longer kept out, Jordan could guess, though.


	9. Prompt 12, 'Longing'

**Prompt 12 – Longing**

_"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us"_  
~ Joseph Campbell

**o**O**O**O**o**

While she waited- the longest, quietest time she had experienced alone in God knows how long- Rachel thought about giving up, and by extension letting go. The truth, the very _heart_ of the matter, was she had _wanted_ an after- give or take the ever or the happy. Graduating high school, college, marriage, children, growing old with _him_- and to watch everyone she loved doing some variation of the same- but in the end, there were so many other things she loved more.

She wanted Jordan and Sara growing up as normal as they could (after everything that had happened) in a house (not as refugees in a valley), and both of them going through life without fear and paranoia dogging their footsteps as it had hers. Rachel pictured possible nieces and nephews with her hair and their father's smile, and she thought she would have liked to see that- but if she stayed, it maybe never would.

Cassie moving on from the war, as she had always been meant to do, and continuing to try and shape the world by example, and make it a better place in a way Rachel would never be able to do with her own 'gift' of violence.

She pictured Tobias spending time with his mother outside of danger, and _God_ she hoped Loren could step in and love Tobias when she no longer could.

Hell, she even loves- on some level Rachel would _never_ tell him about- the material dreams Marco has of becoming a hugely public star, and buying his parents a massive mansion so the three of them can catch up on lost time together.

And Jake… Jake she would love to be able to find enough happiness in front of him that he can move on from everything he had experienced so far.


	10. Prompt 9, 'Dot'

**Prompt 9 – Dots**

_A/N- Follows my one-shot __**'Circle Circle, Dot Dot'**__; not sure how much sense it will make without reading that first. Also Perudo is an awesome dice game; ironically it's a game about who's best at lying… Which works exceedingly well for my purposes. (Think Pirates of the Caribbean, when everyone's auctioning off their souls on the Flying Dutchman.)_

**o**O**O**O**o**

"_Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead."_

**Benjamin Franklin **

**o**O**O**O**o**

The crossed leg touching her own under the makeshift table was warm, and slightly distracting, but not nearly so much as the finger staining her skin with invisible ink as it drew on her knee with distracting circular caresses and taps. Marco was _clearing_ asking for it, but there wasn't much Rachel could do at the moment.

_**Circle**_

She wanted to sock him one for bringing this up- although indirectly, but they both knew _damn well_ what he was doing- but that would be more than obvious, and Tobias wasn't the only one who would see. She settled for scowling at him instead, and was awarded a shit eating grin and a wink in exchange.

_**Circle**_

Given no other option, Rachel sat (semi) serenely between Marco and Cassie in Ax's scoop while the group as a whole continued to try and suss out the truth behind under each other's poker faces. Frankly, since Ax really didn't understand the point of the game again (something about a game about lying being dishonorable), Cassie and Jake lied _very_ badly among friends, and Tobias had abstained from the game in favor of refereeing, it was really down to she and Princess Marco, anyways.

_**Dot**_

Since it was all in (debatably) light hearted fun, Marco supposes he _really_ shouldn't be enjoying putting normally enthusiastically violent Rachel in a position where she was (black-mailed) encouraged to behave while he oh-so-kindly reminded her of their brief stint of legitimate traditional juvenile delinquency.

He did have to make it home with all his pieces parts _not_ mauled by his teammate at some point tonight, after all.

Shame this was so much fun, really.

"Well, we are _so_ not going to Vegas for our twenty-first birthdays, since you all suck at this so terribly." Marco smirked. "And by you all, I mainly mean our fearless leader and his leading lady. You two have the worst poker faces I know. It literally amazes me you were able to successfully convince your parents that you are currently 'working on a history project' instead of fooling around in the woods somewhere."

Jake choked on nothing impressively on nothing.

"So tell me, Xena, how do seven threes sound do you?" He traced three very slow threes on her knee under the table

**Dot**

Rachel didn't even hesitate; she had four of those threes and- just like with most things in this life- Marco was bluffing when he wasn't overreacting and drama queening everything.

"Perudo, monkey boy. Everyone flip 'em; Marco loses."


	11. Prompt 20, 'Obligation'

**Prompt 20, Obligation**

Ugh, I did semi-actual song fic. Blame it on the fact that I'm badly out of shape writing- my father died unexpectedly over the holiday season and I'm still playing catch up with my life since then. (I could write a satire on the way airline travel is *not* supposed to happen…)

Originally done for daythirtynine's prompt **'****Animorphs, Jake, and then she died.' **on live journal, but I figure it fits with this as well.

**o**O**O**O**o**

**To my father, who first handed me Tolkien and Twain when I had finished all the chapter books at my elementary school.**

**o**O**O**O**o**

_When I was young I knew everything..._

_Now I'm guilt-stricken, sobbin' _

_with my head on the floor_

The sun rose the morning after the proverbial dust settled on his last battle for earth, and in a due number of hours it settle back below the horizon again.

The same happened the day after, and the next.

A week went by, and gradually the constant blur of apparently _important_ people around him seemed to expect that he should put one foot in front of the other, soldier on for those who had fallen, _move on_ from the bodies that still weren't identified to celebrating his own supposed _great victory_ that no one he had fought, sweated and bled to save for _years_ would ever savor.

_I won't be held responsible, __  
__she fell in love in the first place_

The enjoyment of a battle well waged had raged in his cousin's blood long before Elfangor ever entered their lives- Rachel was memorably the _only_ four-year-old on the playground he had ever heard of sending a fifth grader crying for his mother; Rachel had caught the boy calling a smaller, gentler preschooler a host of names Jake had at the time been personally unfamiliar with, but the tone the boy was using transcended their limited, childish vocabulary and Rachel wasn't having any of it.

It was years before Jake saw Rachel without the girl she had played white knight for- outside of family-only functions- again.

_For the life of me I cannot remember,__  
__what made us think that we were wise __  
__when we never compromise_

They were putting Rachel to rest tomorrow- putting instead of laying, because his aunt hadn't been able to enclose her daughter in a expensive, glorified _box_ and commit her eldest's remains to the earth for the rest of time.

Jake wasn't sure incinerating the broken remains of his beautiful, reckless, self-sacrificing cousin until all that was left were bitter, charcoaled fragments was a grand improvement, either- but it was by no means his place to express an opinion.

Rachel may have died by the claws of the enemy and of a time and setting of her own violation, but she had perished one of _his_ soldiers and under _his_ orders, too. No white washing of history would change that in either the books that were already being written, or in her mother's mind.

Any words he wanted to say to Jordan and Sara kept turning to dust on his tongue, and his hands shook too badly whenever he tried to write instead as if any _**words**_, however apologetic, could ever give back even a small part of the sister he had robbed them of.

_For the life of me I cannot believe __  
__we'd ever die for these sins, __  
__we were merely freshmen_

**o**O**O**O**o**

_Comments/critiques are wonderful._

Lyrics from my ultimate post-54, guilt-ridden Jake over Rachel song _**The Freshmen**_ by **The Verve Pipe** (slight misinterpretation of some lyrics necessary). Oh, the 90's.


	12. Prompt 19, 'Ignore'

_**Prompt 19 – Ignore**_

**o**O**O**O**o**

_A/N- You will never convince me other than my head!canon that Marco went a little _wild_ after the war… And that were was only ever one other Animorph that would have joined him in this. __**Warning, *ONE* swear word.**__ Reviews are love, even if it's only a favorite line._

**o**O**O**O**o**

_We will never be never be anything but loud  
And nitty gritty, dirty little freaks  
So raise your glass if you are wrong,  
In all the right ways_

_**Raise Your Glass**_**, Pink**

**o**O**O**O**o**

The club was predictably dark, and the mass of people below him on the dance floor pulsed to the thumping back beat from the hidden speakers in a jumbled assortment of anonymity and pheromones.

All in all, just another average night on the town not so different from any other one for him this week, in whatever suddenly trending location his press agent _insisted_ he be seen at. The young, the rich, and the beautiful (or those simply who hoped to regain the first or snag either of the latter two) rubbed shoulders- and a great deal more- in the flashing lights and machine-pumped fog.

A few minutes prior he had opted to ditch his usual entourage of desperate hangers-on for the relative peace and debatable quiet of an upper tier of the establishment, suddenly inexplicably sick of the desperation clothed as manufactured happiness that had surrounded him.

_How very like Tobias,_ he mused, swirling the remainder of his current drink around in its glass. _Find the highest possible thermal and observe the rest of humanity going on with your own active participation._

But Marco didn't really want to think about Bird Boy at the moment- voluntarily alone in the world without any of them when Tobias could have been living it up on the constant free lunch- as it were- of humanity's appreciation-

Rather like Marco's own best friend was currently also _not_ doing.

Marco downed his drink with a grimace- it burned all the way down, although not nearly as much as his prior ones over the last few hours. He leaned forward against the guard rails, and his head spun slightly from his constant earlier indulgence.

_God damn it._

He was young, alive, successful, had the entire _fucking_ world at his feet and he _refused_ to feel guilty about any of that. The rest of the remaining Animorphs didn't understand- _this _was what heroes and victors were _supposed_ to be doing, reveling (modestly or not) in the spoils of their success, not stagnating anti-socially or plowing forward with further do-gooding fueled mainly by their own guilt.

Rachel, however, would have understood. Vivacious, energetic- the paparazzi lenses would have locked on her with the precision of heat seeking missiles _or a hawk's jealous gaze_ and she would have blazed _sparkled_ in the limelight.

Rachel would be one of the girls brave (or drunk enough, but not desperate or slutty like a majority of them; Rachel was everything the opposite of _easy_) who were currently scaling the tiered, raised sections of the dance floor below and gyrating with abandon on the small, personal stages. The spotlights would have stopped specifically on her, and she would have tossed her hair and _laughed_ at the attention.

Hell, she would have easily eclipsed him in the public's gaze anywhere they might have gone- would have effortlessly without breaking either a sweat or a nail in the process- if she hadn't died alone nearly two years ago in a plan that in all reality hadn't been necessary. Instead Rachel, their own warrior princess in all but leather skirt and shining chakram, had exited the stage in the final act- stealing the remainder of Tobias's lines and dimming Jake's spotlight on her way out. Even Cassie wouldn't discuss her former best friend and near perfectly scripted foil once the final curtain had fallen-

And he really _had_ had too much to drink tonight.


	13. Prompt 40, 'Rationality'

Done after a very extended delay for the lovely rattyjol on livejournal to complete their commetfic prompt: **Animorphs, Rachel, she never turns on the light in the bathroom these days, because she can't bear to look at herself in the mirror**

**o**O**O**O**o**

_Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape._  
**George Bancroft**

**o**O**O**O**o**

**40. Rationality**

Rachel knows the rooms of her house backwards, forwards, upside-down and- if need be- blind folded, which comes in excessively handy when she often drags herself home in the moonless darkness that lingers just before dawn.

Even completely exhausted she can trace the winding path from her room- _finger tips lightly grazing the slightly textures surface of each flanking wall_- down the darkened hallway of the sleeping household, silently as a ghost. Sara is murmuring in her sleep to the left, Jordan snores quietly- _spread-eagle and innocently unaware of any conflicts or invasions_- through the open doorway on the right, and her mother is a silent presence behind the closed door directly ahead.

A longer stretch of carpeted stairs _one two three four five six seven eight turn one two three four five_ dead end in her front door and the cool, dead wood signals she's reached the ground floor of the house. The couch angles off to the right three steps into the living room beyond, the stack of magazine's her mom has been meaning to sort through and recycle leans haphazardly at one end, and Jordan's soccer cleats are routinely abandoned nearby.

The location of every kitchen counter and cupboard door from the entrance of the room to the refrigerator door has long since been memorized. Midnight battles both won and lost often make her as ravenous in her human stomach as they do in the ever growing side of her soul crying for her enemy's blood. She'd tried _so very hard_ to push through and ignore—

-The call's grown louder anyways.

These rooms are all left dark and for all intents and purposes untouched to avoid questions she doesn't want to answer, much less hear—_Where were you? When did you leave? Why weren't you here? What aren't you telling me? Why can't you be the daughter I trusted anymore?_

So she traverses her home in silence, sometimes on days when everyone is awake as well. Silence may be an unspoken lie, but somehow it seems less guilty than a spoken untruth.

Even in broad daylight her own bedroom is ridiculously easy to _look_ at without truly _seeing_ a thing; the furniture hasn't changed locations in years, and the slightly outdated posters and pictures on the walls are easy for her eyes to skim over without noticing, as they were chosen and displayed by a younger girl leading a completely different life. The decorative mirror over her dresser conveniently has a colorful scarf- her father had brought her as a gift to make up for not being in town for a major gymnastics competition- draped down to below her eye level, and any reflective knickknacks have slowly been relocated out of direct sight.

The bathroom is harder to not see herself in, however- Rachel never touches the light switch in this room anymore unless it's to turn the previously lit fixtures off. Tobias, Marco, other nameless _unimportant_ boys at her school have found her features attractive in a range from sweet to annoying ways, but she herself is _done_ looking. Her hair- never much of a high maintenance priority to start out with- is generally done in a hurry and left to fend for itself. She never wore much in the way of make up other than lip gloss and she's known how to put _that_ on without a mirror for years.

When she was younger, Bloody Mary had been a popular game she'd played at sleepovers with her friends; Rachel had never been anyone's version of a coward, even in grade school, so she had always been the first to march her bunny-slippered self into the chosen bathroom and, full of childish bravado, flick off the light switch. No bloodstained _guilty_ women had haunted her in her past, but some forgotten, childish version of her was certain that if she glanced up from brushing her teeth now more horrific things than long dead specters would leap out at her.

People. Bleeding. Broken.

Blood and entrails dripping down her skin and in her hair, the worst of it staining her mouth a shameful scarlet; some mornings she's surprised she doesn't spit the blood of her victims into the sink along with her tooth paste.

Intellectually Rachel knows the things she's seen aren't _real_—grizzly vision is too blurry for her to have seen details like these the first time around. No one has _ever_ called her a coward and walked out of the experience unscathed, but Rachel- _Xena, warrior princess_- doesn't look in mirrors anymore anyways. Just in case.

**o**O**O**O**o**

My apologies for not updating since before dirt was dry. Working fifty hours a week has stolen my writing time.


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